The Link #25 - Letters to the Editor

Note for our Readers
While space to include articles and letters in The Link is naturally limited, the editors nonetheless appreciate hearing from as many readers as possible. Having said this, it has become a bit too much for us to engage in correspondence with everyone. We would therefore ask all correspondents to advise us, when writing, whether or not you would permit your letter, or extracts from it, to be published in a future issue of The Link; we would include your name, together possibly with your country, unless you specifically instruct us otherwise.

Facing the Fear of Death

I was first taken to hear Krishnamurti when ‘Thought Breeds Fear’ was recorded at Wimbledon Town Hall in March 1969, at the invitation of my uncle, Jerry Crichlow, father of Keith, who later designed The Krishnamurti Centre at Brockwood Park. My interest in K’s teachings grew from there and has continued to this day.

When I was young, I was terrified of death, or more accurately, the thought of death, or what that meant to a tiny child. I had a happy childhood and loving, caring parents so I don’t know where it came from, but this fear was there. This fear followed me for years, waxing and waning as these things do, even into marriage, a family and beyond.

Although I had read of K’s talks encouraging us to ‘go into things deeply’, I was too busy to do this (or so I told myself ) or preferred to distract my attention away.

When I reached the age of 40 or so, one day I felt I could stand the burden no longer. K had suggested that giving a day or two to understanding something, to really going into it, was not a huge price to pay in a lifetime, even if nothing happened and nothing changed at all.

So one morning I switched off the phone and sat down in a comfortable chair, alone. From ten o’clock until four I thought of nothing but death and the thoughts I had had about it, tracing my life from those early days and teasing out hidden and forgotten memories – all the cracks, all the crevices, all the thoughts that I thought I had buried, or had tried to.

By four o’clock I was very tired, and hungry! So I stopped for the day. The next day at ten, I started again. Thoughts, which had been pouring out on the first day, now came much more slowly. The brain rarely repeated itself (i.e., yesterday’s thoughts rarely came again), but still deeply buried bits and pieces continued to surface like so much flotsam. By two in the afternoon, the process had reached a snail’s pace and by three I had had no new thoughts for an hour.

So I stopped altogether and rose from my chair, thinking that nothing had changed, nothing had altered at all and what a complete waste of time the whole exercise had been – a lot of hard work for nothing and two days regular work to catch up on, as well!

About four or five days later, the subject of death, or a death, came up at supper. To my complete surprise, joy and relief, I found that my whole attitude to death had changed, my whole thinking had transmogrified to a totally different state. No longer did I feel my stomach sink at the mention, no longer was I frightened at all, and that fear has never been back.

A.W. Heath, June 2004

The Blind Alley of the Ideal

I would like to share with you an unusual experience that I underwent as a young man. I listened to K’s talks for the first time at the Colombo Town Hall in January 1957. While listening to him, I felt that I was in the presence of one who was in touch with the eternal. Though something novel struck me, it was later, when I studied his writings, particularly his Commentaries on Living, that I began to grasp the groundbreaking nature of his message.

As K suggested, I experimented with writing down my actual, spontaneous thoughtfeelings, particularly when faced with inner turmoil and conflict. The unusual experience that I mentioned took place one day when I wrote down something that I felt deeply: “From childhood I have always tried to improve myself. In other words, I have tried to become somebody, but this way of thinking has not helped me.” No sooner had I taken my pen off the paper than a deep feeling of emptiness overwhelmed me. In that split second, I felt as if the very ground on which I stood slipped away. Inwardly I was utterly naked, completely stripped of the sense of the ‘I’. The paralysing inner void pierced through every cell in my body. Simultaneously, I was engulfed with a tremendous fear that made my whole body tremble. All this happened in that split second. I became stunned and utterly confused. My attempts to share my confusion and disarray with others became fruitless. The confusion and turmoil precipitated by this shock gradually subsided and gave way to a new way of looking at myself and at the world. I was twenty years old when this happened.

From a very tender age I had tried to lead an ideal life, one dictated by the edicts of the traditional religion and culture. I had imbibed of these values deeply. Self-improvement was the mantra; I wanted to lead a life free from envy, jealousy, greed and violence. At the same time, in the ebb and flow of life, I had absorbed the bad as well as the good in my culture. And now it became obvious that the foundation on which I had built my moral code was rubble. That is, the pursuit of the ideal had led me down a blind alley. If it can be likened to a seed, it fell on hostile ground, the ground on which all of us stand, human consciousness.

Though it was arduous, I started to attend to the actual fact of what I am from moment to moment. In spite of the hindrances and the blockages inherent in the human mindset, hints and openings came from within, without any invitation. They came in the form of vivid dreams, paving the way for the releasing of unconscious desires and drives with explosive force. In spite of lapses, I learned to care for and tame whatever tendencies and animosities came from within. Having been caught in the traditional mould, all my life I had measured myself against something. Now there is a modicum of harmony. If I say that I have understood myself, it would obviously be a great folly. It is dawning on me that knowing oneself is not a departure or an arrival dictated by the known. It is the growing intensity of the flame of insight that is capable of bringing about a new understanding in our relationships.

When we are open and frank and prepared to turn our back on time as becoming, every relationship reveals that we are the other, whoever that other may be. In everyone’s life, we do come across instances where, when the other listens and really shares our problems, all barriers break down and we are overwhelmed by affection and love. I feel that we can and must see the urgency of knowing ourselves in the present, through which the whole story is revealed. As I write these lines, I can feel the old momentum bubbling up. No one teaches a newborn to breathe and we don’t make an effort to practice breathing. Let us cross over the bridge of words and remain silent.

S. Ratnasabapathy, June 2005

Why the Teachings Seem Not To Work

As I have read K, and read about him, for more than 30 years, I would like to propose a new topic for discussion in The Link: Why the teachings seem not to work, even for many serious and dedicated students of all ages. I think this would make a legitimate topic for exploration and sharing and it would bring a certain flavour of honesty and factuality to your fine magazine.

Just for starters, I will try to give a few reasons: Lack of spiritual logistics? It’s still not clear why K, who was supported and protected by spiritual forces, denied the idea of help. Then the issue of inwardly ‘letting go’ might need some clarification for the sake of the conscious part of our mind, which is built on accumulations of all kinds. And, since we’re here, the issue of identification (or I-dentification) could require a lot of deeply honest exploration and exposure. Probably, like those fine university professors who, having their eyes fixed on the Greater Plan of Things, do not bother to touch on ‘self-evident’ issues, K missed this step of the ‘dismantling of identification’, leaving it to other forces from other dimensions.

I feel that now, as new people come in contact with these teachings of such subtlety and weightlessness, it would be more than welcome if we shared our many failures and our few glimpses or brushes with Truth. At the very least, it would help everyone to be more honest with others and, especially, with themselves.

John Raica, March 2005